We need to stop promoting Wix
Twitter has become an odd echo chamber of people promoting Wix but we need to highlight why that's a problem. They have in recent years revamped their marketing. Before 2021 everyone, from every sector of website development, would always caution people off of Wix. Truth be told many still do. The fact is that Wix hasn't become that much better but maybe search marketers have fallen for good marketing of a mediocre product. I hope to keep search marketers informed on how promoting Wix, as an organisation, is problematic.
Here is some background on Wix
Before we debate Wix being ethical or unethical tech we must first look at the state it operates in to clarify how that plays into the ethics of associating yourself with Wix.
Put simply per all renowned human rights organisations, around the world, Israel enacts war crimes, has been labelled apartheid and is illegally occupying Palestine per international law. To support, promote, and benefit monetarily or otherwise, via Israeli organisations would directly translate into complicity towards the oppression of the Palestinian people. Complicity towards apartheid and complicity towards crimes against humanity.
Organisations that have labelled Israel an illegal occupation and colonial movement include Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, Amnesty International and Israeli human rights organisations like B’tselem.
B’tselem is one of twelve human rights organisations, operating in Israel, that call Israel apartheid. The following are their joint statements to the EU High Representative Josep Borell regarding Amnesty’s report “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians”.
“In view of the deepening human rights crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, we consider the unfolding debate about the crime of apartheid in relation to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians not only legitimate, but absolutely necessary,” said the 12 organisations in their statement.
“We therefore disagree with the EU Commission’s rather dogmatic position that ‘it is not appropriate to use the term apartheid in connection with the State of Israel’. The EU Commission should not turn its back on the facts and developments on the ground,” it said, adding, “We wholeheartedly reject the idea that Amnesty’s report displays antisemitic animus and are deeply concerned about the escalating instrumentalisation of allegations of antisemitism to prevent an open debate about Israel’s oppressive policies towards Palestinians.”
Full article here on human rights organisations in Israel deplore statements by European Commission regarding Amnesty International’s report.
Many people argue that the illegal occupation of Palestine is “complicated” and “nuanced”, “it is a both sides conflict” and so on to make the argument that they are two independent nation-states at war with each other. This argument should be defeated thus far but I'll humour everyone and make a few comparisons to refute this claim.
Israel receives over three billion in aid every year from the US, they currently have one of the most advanced militaries in the world, are a nuclear power, and have a self-defence system commonly known as the Iron Dome. They have had military rule over the West Bank since the time of Israel’s inception. As an occupier, they have failed to uphold their responsibilities of civil rights towards the Palestinians for more than seven decades.
Comparatively, the Palestinian people do not have a military, they are a civilian population.
Israeli politicians have hardly been shy about demanding a demilitarised Palestinian state. “We cannot be expected to agree to a Palestinian state without ensuring that it is demilitarised,” Binyamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, said in his foreign policy address at Bar-Ilan University in June 2009.
The Palestine Papers reveal how expansive that demand was: Israeli negotiators demanded to keep Israeli troops in the West Bank, to maintain control of Palestinian airspace, and to dictate exactly what weapons could and could not be purchased by the Palestinian security forces.
Full article here demanding a demilitarized state.
Per International law, the Palestinians have a legal right to fight back with whatever means necessary and that's why they cannot be labelled terrorists. They do not receive billions in aid from the US and today the Gaza Strip is known as an open-air prison for over two million people. An estimated 47% of Gazans are children and an estimated 91% of them suffer from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
These are not two countries at war with each other. It is an occupation of one military rule of oppression over a civilian population.
The responsibilities of an occupying power toward the rights of the occupied population increase with the duration of the occupation. Israel remains principally in control of the West Bank, despite limited Palestinian Authority rule over certain areas, and yet has failed to provide the people living under its control with the rights they are due, including the right to equal treatment without regard to race, religion or national identity. It is long past time for Israel to fully respect the human rights of Palestinians, using as a benchmark the rights it grants Israeli citizens, an obligation that exists regardless of the political arrangement in the Occupied Palestinian Territory now or in the future.
The Israeli army has deprived generations of Palestinians in the West Bank of their basic civil rights, including the rights to free assembly, association and expression, regularly drawing on military orders issued in the first days of the occupation. Even if such restrictions could have been justified then to preserve public order and safety, the suspension of core rights more than half a century later with no end in sight violates Israel’s core responsibilities under the law of occupation.
Here is the full article by Human Rights Watch, Born Without civil rights.
Is criticism of Israel antisemitism
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room and educate ourselves on whether criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine is antisemitic.
Although Israel may be labelled, by many, a Jewish State, criticism of illegal actions by Israel cannot be antisemitic. Similarly, valid criticism of any Muslim country cannot be labelled Islamophobia.
Some people say criticism of Israel is racism but it is simply impossible to be racist towards a colonial settler state because colonialism is in fact racism. In the same way, it would be ludicrous to suggest that the Algerians were racist towards the French for the occupation of Algeria that the Indians were racist towards the British colonialists or that criticism of any colonial body is racist.
The following is an excerpt from the European Journal for Sport and Society on how valid criticism of Israel is not antisemitism and should not be conflated with criticism of Jewish people (which would rightly translate into antisemitism). Although this commentary was for the sports industry the same would apply to the tech industry.
Sports organisations have a role to play in the educational work needed to address the different forms of racism, discrimination and human rights abuses that exist at all levels, in all sports. To be clear, antisemitism has no place in any movement that is advocating greater human and/or civil rights. Antisemitic tropes, such as those posted by Jackson cause hurt to Jewish people and divide and deter supporters. Activists need to be precise in their criticism of the actions of the Israeli state/government (but not ‘the Jews’); at the same time, activists should not avoid making criticism of the Israeli state for fear of (wrongly) being labelled an antisemite. It is possible to be critical of the […] or Qatar regimes without being labelled Islamophobic, or China without being accused of Sinophobia. Pro-Israeli Zionist groups, using hasbara, view the Black Lives Matter movement as a major threat to their preferred narrative and will seek any opportunity to discredit Palestinian supporters in their fight for full equality. Athletes, activists, sports organisations, and business corporations cannot continue to adopt and ‘pick and mix’ approach and differentiate between those deserving, or not, of their human and civil rights.
It would be remiss of me to not encourage people to listen to Jewish people and Rabbi's for a free Palestine. Anyone who is a supporter of a free Palestine knows that Jewish people are some of the most steadfast supporters of the Palestinian people and their human rights. Ask Jewish people how criticism of Israel is not antisemitism.
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Here is a direct link to a tweet by them on how criticism of Israel is not antisemitism.
How is Wix apartheid tech
In an ideal world, it should be enough to simply prove that Israel is irrefutably responsible for oppressing Palestinians and on this basis, people should not promote Israeli tech. In the tech space, this has not been enough of a reason to convince people why promoting Wix directly translates into supporting apartheid. Because people have made the argument that Wix can be, or is, divorced from the state it operates in, so we have to look at how Wix is directly culpable towards the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
There is so much to unpack in this article “Inside Israel’s secret startup machine” on how the co-founder of Wix is an ex-veteran from unit 8200 which is the equivalent of the NSA in the US, for Israel.
“The public did, however, hear about Abrahami, who's now 45. After leaving Unit 8200, he cofounded Wix, currently one of the world's leading cloud-based Web development platforms.”
People could argue that Wix is in Israel but it may not support the military and are only guilty by association. That claim can now be refuted because the founder has done military intelligence service.
He has had the opportunity to leave Israel but refused to do so.
In another interview, Abrahami said he had received numerous buyout offers over the years: “respectable offers from respectable companies.” But those exits would likely have entailed moving some of the company’s operations abroad. “Besides me, there are another 399 people in the company that need to be taken care of. This doesn’t mean we would never sell out, but we are not looking for that kind of exit.”
Link to the full article on how Israel needs more IPOs and fewer exits. That last line in it itself is proof of how the co-founder seems to support Israel which is only problematic because of Israel’s treatment of the people they occupy.
He also talks about how over a hundred people from his unit went on to build successful startups. This is an important reminder of how veterans first serve Israel’s military and go on to make successful businesses that solidify their complicity in the occupation monetarily (paying tax to Israel). It's important to remember here that this is how promoting or benefitting from any Israeli tech would mean support of the Palestinian occupation.
"Just from my generation, there are more than 100 guys from the unit that I personally knew who built startups and sold them for a lot of money," Abrahami says. "There was a team of ten people in one room in the unit. I call it the magic room, because all of them created companies where the average market cap is a half-billion dollars." Abrahami did his part: Wix's market cap sits at $1 billion.
Link to the full article here.
I hope people take a moment to consider who they are promoting, defending and making money for and why that's a problem when the organisation you support is ex-veteran (veterans who played a part in the ongoing occupation).
If only it was just that the Palestinians simply did not benefit from Israeli tech. Not only do they not benefit from it they are unwilling lab rats in its field testing and in some cases, it is then used against them.
In September 2014 three active reservists and former commanders within Unit 8200 said they no longer felt the organisation existed to protect Israel from discrete and legitimate threats, like an Iranian nuclear strike or an assault by Hamas or Hezbollah militants.
Instead, Unit 8200 is a tool of occupation. One whistleblower's father had suffered under the Argentinian junta and his son could see parallels. However excellent the products of Israel's Silicon Wadi, it does put its products in a different light if the skills they are built with derive from military occupation. According to Forbes, more than 1,000 companies have been founded by Unit 8200 alumni.
Link to full article here: Everyone benefits from Israeli tech companies, except the Palestinians.
For those who may not know how Israeli tech is being used against Palestinians here is an article on how Israel is using biometric technology to facilitate military occupation, incl. digitizing movement restrictions & surveillance and here is a much more frightening one on how Israel deploys AI-powered robot guns that can track targets in the West Bank. Someone reading this post probably read about how they used Pegasus spyware on their own people, Jewish, Muslim and Arab Google employees who spoke out against Project Nimbus and Amnesty International just published another report on automated apartheid.
There is a lot of academic reading on how Israeli tech is used against Palestinians that anyone can read for free.
It would be fair to conclude so far that Israel uses tech to further the oppression of Palestinians by first testing it on them, if successful they then benefit monetarily and then move on to whitewash their abuse of Palestinian human rights by promoting it in the global tech industry.
Wix like all its predecessors and its successors play an active role in furthering, promoting and most dangerously whitewashing the ongoing brutalisation of the Palestinians.
How the search industry has glaring double standards and why that’s a problem when it comes to Wix
An outstanding of all of one person has brought up the Palestinian occupation in 2021 at the height of flare-ups in Sheikh Jarrah and why promoting Wix is unethical. This happened two years ago and back then it was interpreted as an attack on the search community. Excuses were made that the people involved (a Wix representative made public statements) did not talk about politics on social, their need to make connections was more important than highlighting the occupation and highlighting the Palestinian struggle for one hour would “ruin a community asset.” Yet the same people have taken a public political stance on the black lives matter movement and recently the war in Ukraine.
It was shocking to see a Wix representative openly call out the employer of the person in question but still play the victim. Marketers quickly went from outrage to character assassination by making false claims and how pointing out the search industry’s double standards offended them. Mordy Oberstein and Carolyn Lyden framed themselves as victims of attacks and public berating. This is ludicrous because Mordy has made some incredibly anti-Arab racist comments on Twitter (just one of many). One can only conclude from this debacle that our industry interprets the people who highlight oppression as toxic while people who are openly racist and bigoted are supposed to be our celebrated tech peers!?
The reason this needs to be highlighted is that not only do people think they should not be criticised for not supporting Palestinians but they can then go on to convolute the narrative in a way that makes it seem like talking about Palestinians is wrong. Legitimate criticism would shatter not only the image that people have of celebrated people in tech but it would irrefutably garner solidarity for the Palestinian struggle. The following tweet is simply to draw a parallel of how the same Wix representative and the same industry behaved only one year later for Ukraine.
Diversity in Wix or a lack of it thereof
A lack of diversity at Wix needs to be highlighted because people have misinterpreted marketing for diversity. Israel is home to over one million Arabs but Wix has yet to hire them. For now, they have one black woman as the face of their token diversity (please note this has absolutely nothing to do with said black woman but everything to do with Wix). Racism in concern with Wix needs to be highlighted because Israel has a track record of being racist towards black Jews, black people who were being paid to leave Israel and please read why black lives don’t matter in Israel.
The search industry has a different opinion on the lack of diversity at Wix. They seem to see one black woman as benchmark diversity and an increase in white women writing blogs for the Wix Learning Hub as the epitome of diversity.
Now that you know what will you do
I hope that we are able to recognise the humanity of the Palestinian people and can join hands in solidarity with them. In the end, it’s not about how Wix reps behave or their supporters but instead how we can do better as an industry. It's about us doing ethical marketing, striving to do better, and building a space where everyone feels welcome. You do not need to be vocal. You don’t need to talk about it publicly but please consider what you know now and how you can take small steps towards a free Palestine. To silently boycott is the bare minimum we can do to help any oppressed people.
I would like to remind everyone how boycotts are a nonviolent form of political pressure that was once used to help end apartheid in South Africa.
Nevertheless, the peaceful boycott by the world's academic and cultural communities was instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa.
Taking a moment to make a big shout-out to the Israeli teenagers who recently refused to join the IDF and had to serve prison time. An excerpt from one of their comments.
“[…] I came to the conclusion that if I join the army, regardless of the role, I am still part of an organization that has been oppressing the Palestinians for decades.”
Lastly, this article is dedicated to the brave Palestinian people who struggle every day to survive under their oppressors, to everyone fighting for a free Palestine, and my friend/critic/editor who I need to pay back in some way, you're a star and I’m humble enough to recognise that I have pitiful writing skills.
A list of reading for anyone interested in learning more about the Palestinian struggle
Ethnic Cleansing Palestine by Ilan Pappe.
B’tselem, apartheid and Israel.
Human rights watch, a threshold crossed, Israel and apartheid.
Israel’s Occupation of Palestinian Territory is ‘apartheid’: UN rights expert
Amnesty, Israel’s system of apartheid.
Gaza could become uninhabitable in less than five years due to ongoing ‘de-development’– UN report
Beyond the Panopticon: The Separation Wall and paradoxical nature of Israeli security imagination